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Ward 10 challenger Fern Cormier has withdrawn his application for a recount of the Oct. 25 vote and city council last night decided not to pursue it.

Following the city's certification of the election result, after which Cormier trailed incumbent Frances Caldarelli by five votes, Cormier formally asked the city clerk and chief returning officer for a recount.

On Tuesday, following a discussion with clerk Angie Hache, Cormier decided a recount would be a waste of city time and taxpayers' money and withdrew his request.

Recounts can be requested by anyone, but ordered only by municipal councils. Caldarelli was prepared to support the recount request, although she would have been required to abstain from voting.

By law, a recount must be conducted in the same way the original ballots were tabulated. In this case, with vote tabulating machines and a recount would have cost the city up to $5,000 to stage. Even then, however, the recount would not address Cormier's principal concern of ballots cast that were not tabulated.

A total of 5,470 ballots were cast in Ward 10. Of those, seven selected more than one ward candidate (called "over votes") and were thus rejected by the tabulating machine, while 168 were improperly filled out ( "under votes") and similarly rejected by the tabulator.

It's the under votes that interested Cormier when asking for a recount. Perhaps some confused voters circled candidate names rather than filled in the arrows next to them, Cormier speculated.

Whatever the case, it's likely a manual inspection of the ballots would indicate voter intent in many cases. And if those ballots could be counted, there is reason to believe the results would be different, Cormier said.

His understanding, based on his work in federal elections, is that recounts include question-a ble ballots by focusing on voter intent, but it's clear that's not the case in municipal elections, he said.

Without inspecting under votes, there's no point in holding a recount, since there's no reason to believe the result would be different, he said.

The 168 under votes in Ward 10 were more than any other ward. Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann, who won a close vote four years ago following a recount, said a recount would probably still be worth it, especially if ballots could be scrutinized. In her case, a recount yielded a difference of one vote.

Nevertheless, the motion Cormier spurred and withdrew was passed over by council without review.

While he's proud to have come closer than anyone else to unseating an incumbent councillor -- all nine were returned -- it's tough to let go not knowing how those 168 people intended to vote, he said.